Ex-UMC executive dies in LV

Tuesday, Jan. 12, 1999 | 11:10 a.m.

David R. Brandsness, a former chief executive officer for the University Medical Center who developed "Quick Care" centers and other services that helped revolutionize hospital care in Nevada, has died. He was 62.

Services are pending for Brandsness, who died Monday of lung cancer at his home.

"Dave possessed the rare combination of business acumen and empathy of the ill and suffering," said former two-term Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, a longtime friend and a former patient at Sunrise Hospital when Brandsness was director of that facility.

"He was good for all of us who were patients in his hospital, because his attitude promoted the healing process."

In his five years at UMC, Brandsness increased annual revenue from $166 million to $394 million and produced the hospital's first profit: $5.9 million in 1993. When he took the reins in 1988, the hospital had been losing about $20 million a year.

Brandsness' efforts to get the hospital into the black were downplayed by his critics, who credited instead a $7 million-a-year county tax increase to cover indigent care and $16 million in Medicare money received during a two-year period in the early 1990s.

Still, Brandsness developed a number of new services during his tenure at UMC, including a state-of-the-art trauma center, a neonatal nursery, a kidney transplant program, AIDS outpatient services and Quick Care centers, which today dot the valley and provide an alternative to emergency room services.

Brandsness was born on March 27, 1936, in Stanley, Wis. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in business administration and received his masters in hospital administration from the University of Minnesota.

When he was 28, Brandsness was named administrator of Sunrise Hospital by Nathan Adelson, the facility's founder, after serving as business administrator for the state mental hospital in Reno.

In 15 years, Brandsness, working with Adelson, built one of the nation's largest and most profitable private hospitals by breaking what had been a longstanding "no advertising" tradition. The success of Sunrise's advertising campaign was copied by hospitals throughout the nation.

After an eight-year stint as founder and CEO of Northern Nevada Medical Center in Sparks, Brandsness returned to Southern Nevada in 1988 to head UMC.

In 1993, Brandsness founded Brandsness Enterprises and consulted in health care delivery services and physician practice management.

Brandsness was a member of American Hospital Association, Federation of American Hospitals, Nevada Hospital Association and chairman of the Hospital Council of Southern Nevada.

Brandsness is survived by his wife, Sharon; two daughters, Lisa Lucchese and Tedi Ann Templeton, both of Las Vegas; two sons, Erik Brandsness and Dr. Scott Greene, both of Reno; and two granddaughters, Lilina and Analise Lucchese, both of Las Vegas.

Donations: In Brandsness' memory to the Ronald McDonald House of Las Vegas, St. Joseph Husband of Mary Catholic Church, or the David Brandsness Scholarship Fund at the University of Minnesota.